The present invention relates to an electronic copying machine with fault detection apparatus.
In a conventional electronic copying machine, for several tens of seconds to a few minutes, a wait mode is displayed at a display unit arranged on an operator's panel after power is supplied until the copying machine is ready for the copying operation. Further, information for completion of continuous copying, jam information, paper empty information and the like are also indicated at the display unit.
However, the electronic copying machine of this type has the following problems.
When an urgent copying operation is required when the machine is in the stop mode, the operator must wait, while looking at the display unit, for a certain period of time after power is supplied until the copying machine is ready for copying. Thus, this results in a waste of time. Further, since the copying completion information, jam information, paper empty information and so on are only displayed at the display unit, the operator who is away from the copying machine will not know whether continuous copying has been completed, resulting in working inefficiency. Further, the arrangement of the display unit tends to be complicated in accordance with the sophisticated functions of the copying machine. Thus, the operator may fail to notice instructions at the display unit, and perform an erroneous operation.
Also, copying machine maintenance, such as clearing jams, can involve a series of steps, thus rendering such maintenance complicated.
The prior art is disclosed in Japanese Patent Disclosure No. 55-74,533 by M. Tada et al, filed on June 5, 1980. This patent application discloses a copying machine which detects the status of the copying machine and produces audio information in correspondence with the detected status. However, this copying machine does not have means for producing audio or visual information for reminding the operator of the subsequent series of steps which must be made by him for correcting mechanical trouble of the copying machine, for example, jamming.